


Just As Suddenly

by Fanfaire



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Kinda?, M/M, Ronan is a dick, blue is blue, gansey is an emotional wreck and so am i??, i dont even know what to tag this as, noah and adam show up for like 3 seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanfaire/pseuds/Fanfaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the tumblr prompt: ok but a ‘your apartment is next to/above mine and i can hear you and your partner dancing and singing and the bed moving and you two laughing and talking in hushed tones and it won’t let me sleep so i bitch about it to you 24/7 and one day it stops and one day turns to one week and then months and i haven’t seen you smile in forever please let me in, i’ve been knocking for ten minutes’ au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just As Suddenly

     Blue was usually _so good_ at staying out of things… Kinda.

     She prided herself on her independance, on how she had very few friends, and how she didn’t have people relying on her. It was for the best. She didn’t want to make attachments, she told herself. Not because she was afraid or anything, but because she didn’t need to. Okay. Maybe she was a little bit afraid, but who wouldn't be. She was destined to kill the one she loved. How to avoid that? Don’t love anyone. If Blue’s strategy for not loving anyone meant not liking anyone, not helping anyone either? Whatever.

 

     So all things considered, one would never expect to find Blue Sargent, standing outside a virtual stranger’s door, holding a plate of cookies (store bought, of course. She wasn’t going to bend her rules so far as to _bake_ for the guy) and begging to be let in. Gods, how did she let this happen?

* * *

 

     Blue had lived in the dorm next to Gansey for a year and a half, and for most of that time, she could have pretty much cared less for the guy. She saw him nearly every morning -- he collected the mail at the same time she left for her first shift. He would nod to her, she would toss a half-awake smile in his general direction, and that would be it. She saw him quite often in the afternoons as well, though. She came home around one, ate lunch, grabbed her backpack and headed to her afternoon class. Gansey had a class at the same time in the building adjacent, so occasionally they walked a few feet away from each other, never exchanging words, all the way to the point where they had to separate. Gansey would nod, when Blue was paying attention (which she usually wasn’t, earbuds being a permanent accessory) she would half smile, and that was all.

     The real times Blue got to know her neighbour, where the times when Ronan was around. The boy was like a rash you couldn’t get rid of. Harsh, unfriendly and often annoying. Blue saw him for the first time one morning as she was headed out the door for work. She’d expected to see Gansey, as she always did at that time. Instead when his door swung open, out came a tall, lean boy with a buzz cut, pulling on a leather jacket as he let the door fall shut behind him. He brushed past Blue, who had stopped in the middle of the corridor to gawk, and this jolted her out of her trance. She headed for the exit behind him, and once on the street, she watched him disappear around a corner a few blocks down. He was gone, but not for long.

 

     “Gansey!” Blue called again, knocking on the door a little louder. Why her? Why _her?_ “Gansey open up, I know you’re in there!” She felt ridiculous, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t just go back into her dorm and listen to him crying through the paper thin walls. Though she desired to remain out of other people’s business, she couldn’t just let him go through this alone.

 

     Screw Ronan. _Screw. Ronan._

     He came around every day for the next few months. Literally every day. The revised Gansey-Blue schedule now looked something like this:

 

     Blue would leave her apartment at eight, just early enough to get to the bakery where she worked mornings, in time for her eight thirty shift. On her way out she would pass Gansey’s doorway, where she could usually glimpse Gansey giving the boy with the buzz cut a farewell kiss on the cheek. Ronan seemed like he was trying to indulge the other boy, and he probably would have preferred to just slip out by himself like the first morning. Despite leaving before Ronan did, his strides must have been longer, because he always brushed past her in that rude, abrasive manner of his. At lunch, she would come home, grab her bag and a snack and head out the door. Sometimes Gansey would leave at the same time as her, but more often than not, he didn't. Usually, she saw him sitting next to Ronan under the tree outside Gansey’s lecture hall, eating and kissing and laughing. That tree had been the point where Blue and Gansey had always split, but now Blue simply walked past it by herself, Only slightly missing the nods from Gansey she no longer received. Even when Gansey did leave at the same time as she did, he seemed to walk faster now. They were no longer side by side as they walked, instead she trailed far behind, telling herself it didn’t sting.

 

     When she arrived home after her night shift, she used to be able to hear only the soft classical music floating through the wall that meant Gansey was studying. Instead, she heard Ronan’s raspy, harsh voice. She heard Gansey’s gentle chuckle. She heard rock music playing. She heard bed springs. She heard Ronan’s voice again. _Gansey, Gansey, Gansey._ She put in headphones and blasted Vivaldi (or sometimes Beethoven) and pretended she couldn’t hear Gansey’s voice echoing back. _Ronan._ And so it went.

 

     This continued for months, and months, and months. She knew the old routine wasn’t coming back, and she cursed the boy with the sprawling tattoo across his back (she only knew it was there because during the summer months, Ronan only wore muscle shirts. He never stopped brushing past her in the hall, it was kind of super rude, but she never called him on it either). Blue went back to having only one friend (Noah, who was pale and shy and who she only _ever_ saw at the library), and it wasn’t until she had that she even realized she even considered Gansey a friend at all. He was more like a half-friend. His shift from her half friend to Ronan’s boyfriend made her question who he really was, though. Was he the polite, quiet neighbour she knew? Or did Ronan just bring out his true qualities…

 

     A year after Ronan had started coming around, he stopped, just as suddenly.

 

     Though the walls were thin, Blue didn’t hear the conversation. She was accustomed to having her headphones in at all time, so the only thing she heard was the bang of the door slamming. Blue pulled one ear phone out, listening for a moment. There was a pause that seemed to stretch on forever. Then she heard a single, broken sob. There was another pause and then: “Adam? I need you to come pick me up,” another sob. “No, um. Ronan. No just… see you in a few”.

 

Blue didn’t see Gansey for a week. She had figured whatever had happened would pass, but it didn’t. Gansey came back as Blue was leaving for class, sliding out of a pickup truck, with a wave and a sad smile to the driver. Blue heard a faint Henrietta accent, and she missed home. Gansey did not nod to Blue. Blue felt her chest tighten, but she didn’t bother smiling at him either.

 

     Gansey didn’t come out of his dorm very often. He went to class maybe twice a week, and Blue never saw him collect his mail. This went on for weeks, and then weeks turned into months, and Blue started sliding his mail under his door, once the mailman had just begun piling it on top of the box because his slot was full. She went to his professor, too. She was in the same building as his first class for her second, so she’d seen him leave his classroom a few times in the past. She asked his prof if he’d been missing much, and the prof gave her a package to take to him, along with a warning that he needed to be coming more often. She’d slid it under the door as well, with no note from herself. She still didn’t want to be involved.

     But tonight, she just _had_ to do something. He’d sounded so alone, so desperate. He needed help, and she suspected she was the only one around who actually knew this, or cared. She wondered, for the first time, if perhaps he was as alone in this town as she was.

 

     “Gansey, it’s Blue.” She called, exasperatedly. Then a jolt went through her. She didn’t ever recall telling him her name before. Had they really never spoken? She thought back to the first time she’d heard his name, and realized that it had been from Ronan, in greeting, through the wall.

 

     She leaned against the door, ready to give up. Just as she did though, the door swung open, and she nearly fell into the room. Strong arms steadied her as she caught her balance. “Blue?” Gansey asked, his voice hoarse from crying.

     “Yeah.” She said, “I’m sorry to barge in like this, but I could hear you through the wall, I um live next door.” She said, and then wanted to kick herself for stating the obvious. “I brought cookies, and I’m the one who’s been bringing your um, mail. The mailman has sort of just been piling it on top of the box now.” She was rambling, _why was she rambling?_ “And I was the one that brought you those course notes too… I just, I know you’ve been going through a hard time--”

 

     She was cut off as Gansey took the plate from her and set it down on his desk. Turning towards her, he wrapped his arms around her tightly, and she felt all of her built up tension ease out of her as she relaxed into the embrace. “Thank you.” He said, his voice thick. When he released her, he held her at an arm's length, studying her face. He was quite taller than her, and she found herself nearly straining her neck to meet his gaze. “Funny,” he said, “I always thought your name was Jane.”

 

     Blue was glad she hadn’t stayed out of this, suddenly.


End file.
